[gavel]. >> chair fewer: good afternoon, everyone. the meeting will come to order. this is the april 24, 2019 meeting of the budget and finance committee. i am chair sandra lee fewer. our clerk is miss linda wong, and i would like to thank jason and samuel for sfgovtv for broadcasting this meeting. madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> clerk: yes. [agenda item read].

>> chair fewer: thank you very much, madam clerk. can you please call item one. >> clerk: item one is a meeting on key safety public strategies in the city budget identifying gaps and levels for future spending. >> chair fewer: thank you very much. today is the second hearing on matters of priority from members of the board of supervisors. next week, we'll have our mental health and substance abuse budget hearing, and on may 8 is a budget hearing on secondary priorities including clean and green streets, funding for the minimum compensation ordinance for nonprofit workers and support for all businesses. i said this last week but as a reminder, the purpose of the board in identifying these initial priorities is to explore priority funding areas

during the mayor's proposed budget, which will take place through the end of may. once the mayor submits her budget on june 1, we will be able to discuss priorities that may look different from what we're discussing now. because the wide variety of topics could have made for a very, very long hearing, my office has focused this to a few key departments that i've mentioned earlier. there are other points that we could explore other topics that we could not get to today, including a hearing for incarceration spending that we are planning for may 22. with that, let's get into our presentations for today. i am going to ask each of my colleagues to wait until the

end of the presentations for comments and questions. mad madam clerk, will you please set the timer at 20 minutes. thank you very much. >> good afternoon, chair fewer and members of the committee. dan goncher from the budget and legislative analyst's office. we're going to present on matters related to public safety and those including san francisco police department staffing levels, including staffing classes and crime prevention and response by the police department, including vehicle break-ins, community approaches to public safety, gun violence, restraining orders, youth and vocational services, muni driver security, vision zero, narcotic arrests and convictions, and an update of the jails.

i'm now going to turn it over to london berry to discuss the departments that she worked on. >> good afternoon, supervisors. as of a few days ago, the department has 1,886 full duty sworn officers. that's in compliance with the charter mandate of 1971. as you know, the department was funded for three classes of 50 cadets. they're in the academy with anticipated dates of graduation in may and august 2019. one of the classes, they fell short of 50, and they are adding a lateral class in june to makeup for some of that shortfall. we were also asked to look at sworn separations. sworn separations peaked in

fiscal 16-17, and then they declined in 17-18, and the 18-19 numbers are through february, but it's a total of 84. annualized, it would be a total of 126, so a 20% decrease over the prior year. the civilianization process, the department was budgeted 25 positions. funding for that was sort of staggered for 19 positions that was available on january 1, and for the remaining six, it was just made available in april. so of those 25 positions, six have been filled, and the others are at separate stages of the process. currently, the controller's office is working on a civilianization study, and that was expected to be released shortly.

we have a lot of performance metrics in the report and i'm not going to cover all of them in the interest of time, but i'm going to highlight two of them. priority a calls, and this is the resulting seconds. the department has a goal of responding to priority a calls in four minutes, which is 240 seconds. you can see over the past couple fiscal years, they've been over their stated goal every single year. i've talked to the department and that's due to an increase in 911 calls, especially priority a calls, and congestion which hampers the ability to 91 -- of 911 to arrive at a situation quickly. fiscal year 2017-18, property increased by 36 per 100,000 population, so there's an increase in property crime even after you account for an increase in population. and this table or this chart here shows basically that the

increase in property crime is driven by a significant increase in larceny, which is that top very large shaded blue bar there. larceny increased by 15% between 2012 and 2018, and it represents 82% of all reported crime in san francisco. current rates, those are the rates at which the department makes an arrest or identifies a suspect in a crime. this is the property crime clearance rate. and i wanted to highlight this because it's been trending downward? it's decreased from 10.8% in 2008 to 5.9% in 2017 which was one-third of the national average. a news worthy component of property crime is oughty break-ins and -- auto break-ins and thefts from vehicles.

so the annual thefts from vehicles from the city performance scorecards and police is shown here. they peaked in 2017 and there's actually been a decrease in 2018. however, in 2018, there's still an average of 67 vehicle break-ins per day. according to the district attorney's office, less than 2% of those led to an arrest. so the police department has piloted a couple of things to address theft from vehicles, but they're working on neighborhood crime units. they piloted that in two district stations, mission and t taraval. they implemented an increased approach and beat officers. according to a report that they presented in january 2019, auto burglaries actually did decrease by 19% in the taraval district and by 4% in mission.

separately, the department is implementing a new policy that assigns two officers to the crime prevention station. those officers are assigned to a different station each week to address a different incident in each district. moving along, community approaches to public safety is another area that we were asked to look at in our priority report? s.f. safe, which stands for safety awareness for everyone is the community engagement arm of the san francisco police department. they work on crime prevention, education, and public safety services. and in particular, they manage the neighborhood watch program which are also known as block safety groups. these are groups of neighbors and community members who come together and meet regularly and they develop community preparedness plan and discuss crime activity and organize to cleanup parks and streets and have a sense of community public safety. the community ambassadors

program was another area of interest that is run out of the city administrator's office. this trains residents to act as a safety presence in targeted neighborhoods and to engage and inform members of the public. the program typically has 30 or 35 ambassadors at any given times and they work in teams in the bayview and chinatown and tenderloin and the mission and in visitacion valley. and finally, the sfpd has increased the number of foot patrols since 2016. that is shown here. so this is a sort of three-year span. you see down at the total there were 49 foot beats in 2016 and it increased up to 144 as of march 2019, so that has also represented a significant increase in the ratio of foot beats across sector patrol. so we were asked to look into the language ability and racial and ethnic background of community ambassadors and also of foot patrol officers.

according to the police department foot beats, assignments change based on several factors, and as a result, the department was not able to provide the racial ethnic background and the language capablities of the officers assigned to the foot beats. however, they provided information for the current team as of march 2019 and also for all ambassadors in 2019. there's a variety of languages spoken and racial and eight 234ik backgrounds in the ambassadors. moving onto gun violence. gun violence restraining orders is a court order that prohibits an individual from purchasing a gun or other relates -- like, ammunition and magazines and orders an individual to surrender firearms to law enforcement. immediate family members and law enforcement are the only individuals who can have a

judge for a gun restraining order. i talked to the sheriff's department and the police department who both stated they're working on implementing a policy related to gun violence restraining orders. secondly, relating to domestic violence restraining orders, the restraining party is required to surrender any guns that they have in their possession, and the sheriff district attorneys or police department tracks that. they'll follow up with an individual to ensure they surrender the firearm to achieve compliance. youth and vocational services. these are provided significantly by oewd, rec park and children, youth, and their families. in the report, we have sort of an overview of all of the initiatives and programs and support for each vocational training that includes skill certifications and stem in

other heidi manned industries like nursing and medical care. and we also have breakdowns of participants by supervisor district. driver safety. so the sfmta in their strategic plan has stated a goal to achieve a 5% decrease in accidents per month. m.t.a. has already completed the installation of operator enclosures on muni buses and they're currently working on technology improvements that will allow the agency to remote in and view the bus in real-time. separately, there's the sfpd muni search program which is a work order with the police department where sfmta has uniformed police officers sort of ride muni buses at random to increase the public perception of law enforcement on muni. that's funded with a

1.3 million grant, i believe, from homeland security. moving to vision zero, which is san francisco's road safety policy that was adopt index 2014 -- adopted in 2014, the policy's goal is to reach zero fatalities by 2024. so there were six fatalities in march, and 10 fatalities in all of 2019, which represents a significant increase overall of laugh year. vision zero lists the goals that the city is focusing onto achieve our goal. vie visibility enforcement from the sfpd traffic unit, and also education campaigns and communication. and vision zero stated that this is the area that's in need of additional resources and dedicated reliable funding sources. traffic company. so sfpd traffic company

partners with vision zero to enforce the main causes of traffic collisions. these are motorcycle patrols. in 2018, there were five sergeants and 20 motorcycle officers, and that increased by five officers in 2019. recently, the department announced that 15 officers joined a training class in may to provide more targeted enforcement that i mentioned before. narcotics arrests and prosecutions. so narcotics arrests are prosecuted by the general unit. there's not specifically a noorkts unit. the department stated in 2018, 5% of the incoming cases into misdemeanor were drugs related and 22% of the cases coming into the felony unit were drug related, and the department

estimates it spends $22 million a year prosecuting drug cases. finally, our office is working on a report that will be reported at neighborhood safety and public services, and i'm going to bring dan now to talk about the jails. >> thank you, lemon. so we received a request by this committee in march to include a brief summary update on the county jails in our budget priority report. it is our understanding as chair fewer mentioned a few minutes ago that a hearing is scheduled for may 22.

>> chair fewer: that's correct. and so i'm wondering if perhaps we should leave this part of the presentation until may 22. >> yes. >> chair fewer: thank you very much. >> okay. sure. >> chair fewer: thank you very much. >> okay. so i'll just run through policy considerations that we included in our report grouped by department. so we had some upgrades regarding the civilianization study that the department is working onto ask the police department to share its plans to address the findings and recommendations from that study. also for the department to address new areas of funding for the board. also, the board could ask the police department to identify potential causes and solutions to low and declaring clearance rates for property lanes and address solutions to reduce

target times for priority calls. also pending input from the public safety neighborhood services committee scheduled for tomorrow, the board could also ask the police department and the sheriff's office to present the implementation strategy for gun violence restraining orders to the board once it has been developed. the board could also ask the mayor to fund permanent staffing to provide funding for the sheriff's restraining orders. the board could also have the mayor's office to increase funding for youth services, skill services and early

intervention program as an option to public safety. we have an option to request multiple departments to provide data on a number of programs by supervisorial district. and finally, we -- the board could ask the m.t.a. to report annually on a strategic plan to report on the 5% increase regarding incidents regarding sfmta employees. the board could request the police department to ensure new staffing resources are allocated to address the board's areas of priority which may include traffic company and targeted enforcement actions to achieve vision zero action strategy actions, and finally, the board could take actions

tomorrow at the public safety and neighborhood services related to the open air drug dealing in the tenderloin and south of market neighborhoods. and that concludes my presentation. we're happy to answer any questions. >> chair fewer: colleagues, any questions? yes, tour stefani. >> supervisor stefani: i just wanted to ask with regard to the policy implementations, i just want to lead everybody know that i'm on top of that. i'm working with the city attorney's office to make sure it happens in a timely fashion. it was signed by governor brown september 30, 2018. we are now in 2019, and it's been way too long. i'm working on getting those implemented as soon as possible. that one is checked off the list. >> chair fewer: thank you. any other comments? questions? supervisor walton?

>> supervisor walton: thank you so much, chair fewer. just a quick question as i look ad slide 11. just -- at slide 11. just want to make sure i'm reading the data correctly for bayview and ingleside correctly for foot patrol. are we saying they have 39 patrols and foot sectors in bayview and 4 foot beat -- and we've got that directly from the police department? >> that's correct. >> supervisor walton: thank you. >> chair fewer: supervisor ronen. >> supervisor ronen: i'm just wondering, the rep from the controller's office, when we should expect the report on civilianization? >> peg stevenson. i'm the director the unit in the controller's office. we've been looking back, take a

different perspective and look at success in filling positions. we need to reconcile what we heard from them with what was reported in the budget analyst's report, and then kathrin mcguire or somebody else from the police department can speak to this. they've had a working group to identify agencies with the civilian proposals now. we're doing some validation of that and comparing it to their overall org charts to look at how complete it is. [please stand by] >> in regards

soon, is there any indication, i think it's the 58 you were looking at. how many possibly would be recommended to be supervised. >> so there could be a couple of different lists at issue. the positioned you had funded and approved in last year's budget, so there's a progress report to be made on those. there's a new list the police department will be coming forward with. there's no function on it there isn't a good candidate on it that isn't a good candidate for civilization and i think you'll concur in their recommendations to you. our process is to test how complete the work is. for example, if they've recommended to civilianized

units and depend uniform supervision that's something we want to test and see if they can go further. that's why we've been looking at the refreshed org chart and having that conversation with them. i guess i can say with fair confidence that when you hear their proposal for civilianization in their upcoming budget we support the recommendation. >> commissioner: thank you. as indicated in this report, the national average seems to be way higher in terms of civilianization versus the san francisco police department. i just glanced at it. was it 30% nationally and in san francisco it's 14% of the positions as civilianized.

>> because the police department does not include 9-1-1 dispatch center or parking enforcement where other major metropolitan police departments may include them is probably why they're below but not the only reason. >> commissioner: that's some logic to where this is such a big difference. i'll meng it here. i don't know if it's going to come up. i don't see anywhere on the items but there's also an effort two years ago to have the police department look at their staffing and what the staffing needs are. i was really hoping that the completion of that analysis would have been done for this budget cycle. it looks like we're not going to

get it done. did you look at all at that piece? the projection is it's probably going to be done in the next budget cycle. it has such an impact in terms of us understanding more thoroughly what the final number we'd like to be supporting in terms of the best practices. has the b.l.a. looked at that piece at all? >> supervisor yee this nick menace ard from -- menard from the budget office and we did an analysis of the patrol staff and function. at the time the police department was planning to do an analysis of their staffing for investigations but i'm not sure what the update is on that study.

the different departments are here and if they could answer to this, the other thing the city administrators is take lead on is the whole justice project. in which the different justice departments and the courts and d.a. and public defender and the social service and the police department have been for 15 years trying to figure out a way to better speak to each other in terms of electronically. if that ever occurs, again, it's probably too soon but hopefully

get some efficiency that can impact the staffing and we can figure out where individuals are in the criminal justice system. the audit mentioned scheduling and how we could increase the number on time. i noticed that wasn't in your report this time around but that's something i'm interested in looking at again and finding

out what happened with the 2018 report but other than that i'm done. >> we'll be having more conversations in june about staffing. i also want to mention president yee called for an audit on the staffing and at this them tee -- at the time the recommendation was 203 to be civilianized. there was discussion by members not on the committee. i think the committee came to an agreement of civilianizing 50 officers within a two-year

period. we'll we'll be discussing that issue when the police come around their budget. thank you very much. we may call you back but now i'd vik -- like to have chief -- sorry. supervisor mandelman. i forgot about my colleague. sorry, chief. >> hold up. >> i had a few clarifying questions which you may not have answers to but maybe it gives the chief a heads up about things i'm interested in. i think it's on page six of your slides you talk about the decrease in response time. the two reasons you have there are increased 9-1-1 calls and increased in traffic and congression. i'm wondering if you were able to drill down further into what is driving the increase in 9-1-1 calls over that time period.

>> i don't have the exact specifics but i know that the department also mentioned an increase in popatiulation as pa of the reason. >> commissioner: i'd be interested if it's population increase or callers. i know the fire depend implemented measures to deal with the frequent callers. i'd be interested to know if it's the same people having 9-1-1 calls over and over. >> i think we can look into that with the d.e.m., emergency management. >> commissioner: i think that would be useful. and on the increase in larceny and you had a couple pages later where you talked about the increase in car break-ins and an important component and pulled back and said that wasn't an important component in the increase in larceny.

what similarly i'd be interested in knowing over the seven and eight years what is the increase? it's troubling. it's shocking to think we're having 50% or 60% more larceny incident but i'd be interested in knowing what the larceny incident are. >> i can look into that for you i think that's part of fbi's national data set and i can do some stats. >> commissioner: cool. and i think on page 11 you put it together to show the increase in foot patrols as a ratio and it demonstrates that and that's something probably all of aus applaud. i was interested in the tenderloin numbers in particular because there's always the question when you're increasing resources going to public safety

and enforcement response what you're getting for the additional dollar. the city's question is often where to put the additional dollars. there's been significant additional dollars put into the tenderloin if i'm reading this correctly. like certainly way more foot patrols which is good but also significant increase in cars. if we knew something positive was happening that would be a good story to but would like to tell what's coming from the presence in the tenderloin. i don't want to speculate but it'd be nice to know what we're getting for that.

also for the increased foot patrols and i know they're assigned by station but there's officers doing beats associated with h sock and how do they relate to these officers? there may be even more people on the streets if it doesn't include the h sock. i'm curious how h sock relate to that. and if you had a discussion of what led to the de -- decline. >> the chief sup -- is up next so you can ask him.

president yee. >> commissioner: one question about ambassadors. anecdotally people say it's great and i believe it could be great. is there when you look at that program, have you seen or come across anywherer are it talks about how to evaluate the effectiveness of the program? >> i did not get performance metrics. if you're preventing time it's more to capture or measure what you're preventing but i can circle back and see if there's anything i can -- >> commissioner: it's probably not that difficult if one area didn't have it before a number of crimes if you can tally it and does it decrease.

>> commissioner: i'd like to add one request on to what supervisor mandelman requested and we see the increase in foot patrols. when did we see this increase in the foot patrols and in the resources in the tenderloin. and to compare the data of outcomes from before we had them until after we had them. thank you very much. okay. if that's it, let's go to our next speaker which is chief scott. come on up.

>> hi, supervisors. we'll get the power point set up. supervisor yee, mandelman, ronen and stefani and walton. good afternoon. we'll go through our power po t point. i'm sure you'll have questions and after we'll open it up for questions or stop me in between if you have any questions while we're going through it. we'll start with our strategic initiatives to lay a foundation of what we're trying to have fi

initiatives. >> our operational priority remain consistent. i came before the board last year with basically the same priorities given the current public safety landscape. we wanted to stay focussed on these four operational priority. first and foremost, violent crime. second, property crime, third,

homeless and harm reduction efforts and four coverage. and we've had a lot of success in the past year and want to continue to expand those strategies. our increased foot beats we dead kate -- dedicated 40 plus when you county the homeless and many are rooted in behavioral health issues. we want to be part of a larger construct and be part of a city solution and that led the police department operate in a silo and we'll talk more about that. we create the neighborhood crime unit based on a resolution from supervisors president yee and ronen last year and we've had success there as well. we've also launched our investigations bureau, really, relaunched it and produced some great results. they include a reduction in auto

break-ins and bicycle thefts and larcenies. we had a significant reduction of homicides last year and a clearance rate of 100% for a major city it's something to be proud of. we've also assisted hundreds of unhoused individuals into shelter or other services they need. the san francisco police department has been contacted by departments across the nation, other police departments wanting to imlate our -- emulate our strategies to reduce crime on the streets. so what are we looking to do? we want to continue to see a reduction in our violate crimes and our crimes and aggravated assault s have been down and part is adding a centralized investigations unit.

we added two new units to address crime trends. those are the robbery and property details. the details look at city wide trends wells those conducted by sophisticated crime networks. our results have been rather good at this point. this is year to date february to this year. homicides show a 38% reduction, aggravat aggravated assault show 38% reduction and the trends are valid to this day. we have reductions in each of those areas. our violent crime, we've seen a significant drop in violent crime on the side of gun related violence due to investment in

our crime, gun and intelligence center. we use intelligence and community engagement to identify unlawfully used firearms especially those used to commit violent crimes gist of the unit is to identify serious shooters and guns. we're talking about guns used in multiple crimes. we look to the community as a whole and it requires an immediate and long-term response. our community engagement helps people affected by violate crimes recover and help prevent future violence. when a violate incident occurs the san francisco police department works to ensure we are providing service on the days, weeks and months afterwards. in addition to outreach and support we're looking for possible factors impacting safety of the area in which the violate crime occurs and that's part of our strategy. you see the goals with our

street violence response team and partnership with the department of public health, for support and survivors of violent crime and our town hall meeting after traumatic events. those have proven to be effective in addressing the community and having the community be a part of the solution. in the last year we implemented strategies to address property crimes and we're tracking well on property crimes and continuing the trend from 2018. our theft from vehicles are down 21%. burglaries are down 15% and larceny is down 18%. our property crime strategies include proactive and reactive strategies including and i know you have questions about our foot beats but our increased foot beats and increased visibility are part of a

prevention effort. it's our philosophy our officers make a difference and when they're out on patrols we have seen significant reductions in those areas. operations in hot spot areas and specialized investigations unit and educational campaigns and community awareness are part of our overall property crime strategies. foot beats. foot beats and police visibility. i mentioned that we believe that that is a huge part of our not only our response to our issues and challenges with property crime and violent crime but a preventive effort. so we have worked hard to do everything we can to reassign officers to increase our foot patrols across the city. september 2017 we reassigned 69 officers to foot patrol and that'd california policy lab and

do an independent study to look at the effectiveness and the report indicated there was a definite statistical positive outcome from the foot patrols both in larceny and assault. that report is available for any other supervisors that want to take a look at it. the strategy does come with trade-of trade-offs though. we have more officers assigned to the foot beats but have challenges with our response time and responding to 9-1-1 calls. we're constantly trying to balance that but we need both. we need to respond and meet our goals on response time and also need foot beat. we want to continue the level of foot beats we've been doing and we have overtime we've allocated to continue to sustain the resources. homeless and harm reduction strategies it. speaks to street

conditions. it gets to supervisor mandelman's questions about what we're getting in terms of the investment we put in foot beats. we've doubled down on our efforts and a lot of the calls and since we've dedicated 40 officers to helping those on our streets. our healthy streets operation center which the board had a hearing on recently sis a coordinated effort to help people enter service. i want to emphasize the multiple agency part. as you know these are complex issues and complex problems. they're very complicated. it take a multiagency approach to move us forward and we're

happy to be a part of that. we took a leadership role in getting the healthy street operation center and that collaborative effort in place. we've seen great outcomes. we have a lot of work to do but we've seen great outcomes. it's also known as hsoc functions under the believe -- belief it may take multiple interactions with a person to get them help and get them in a play where they can change the trajectory of their lives. it has to be consistent. it has to have outreach and has to have aggressive and community engagement on behalf of police officers that are doing the work as a result of the hsoc model we've seen a reduction of tents on our streets and more than 1,300 people off service. we've began outreach those suffering from behavioral issues on the streets with a coordinated outreach effort. more than 200 people have been placed into service and roughly 1100 and 66 people have been

engaged. that's a significant step in terms of our strategy and in terms of our responsiveness which is one of our strategic initiatives to be a more responsive department it meet the needs of our city. we're pleased with where that's going. next, i'd like to talk about vision zero. we've expanded the staffing and i'd like to thank supervisors mandelman and fewer for bringing that forward and we continue to expand to get our traffic to a better place in terms of deployment. we've seen an increased incitatio incitations in citations and 65% from the traffic company are focussed on the five citations.

those five violations we believe caused the most collisions and injuries, stop signs, lane changes, pedestrians violations. we've begun to use the increase in deployment to work to our advantage. we're having a busy year in 2019 and the increased deployment will be an investment worth it in terms of our focus on the five and vision zero initiative. we also began to use technology to achieve the goal. we are able to enter citations on mobile device to stay on the field and do their work on their mobile devices and provides real-time data to determine immediate enforcement and engineering strategies. that's a technology we hope to

continue to improve and build upon. we believe that will make us more efficient and help us reach our vision zero goals. here's the breakdown of our general fund. it's $522 million. 85% is dedicated to personnel cost and others is capital, vehicle, equipment, supplies, service and benefits. for our 2019 through 2021 fiscal priority, the fiscal priority are intended to maintain the crime levels and adhere to strategies. what we're trying do as part of our strategic planning process and how we structure this organization is to be able to be adaptable and flexible. things happen all the time we

have to adapt to. two years ago hsoc was nowhere in the vocabulary but now it's a big part and a year and a half we didn't have an investigations bureau and have one now and increase the foot beat and the fiscal priority follow the ability to have the organizational and infrastructure to do that effective. and they address the technology and equipment needs. and while implementing the policy and procedures to make the department more accountable and responsive to the needs of the community. as you can see on the slide it reemphasizes what we intend to do te -- do the next two fiscal years. staffing. i'm sure you'll have a lot of follow-up questions. the department has 1,886 full-duty